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Fish vs. Krill Oil, SFA ↔ PUFA - False Advice, Low-FODMAP Diet for Athletes GI Tracts - Nutrition Research Update 9/17

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In contrast to the often-asked krill vs. fish oil question, the issue of PUFA vs. SFA seems to be resolved. At least if we focus on replacing SFA with N-6-PUFA well-controlled RCTs don't show a benefit. If studies are interesting, but there's not enough to dissect for a full SuppVersity  article, they make it to the short news . Today's installment is a nutrition research update and it deals with (1) the often-asked question whether there's a health- or performance-relevant difference between fish and krill oil , (2) the often-heard advice to replace saturated fats in your diet with omega-6 fats to improve your heart health, an advice of which a new meta-analysis shows quite cleverly that it's an artefact due to the inclusion of insufficiently controlled studies, and (3) using the low-FODMAP diet in athletes to reduce gastrointestinal problems that range from burping to diarrhea. Learn more about various topics at the SuppVersity Apples a day + Lot's...
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How Essential are Omega-6 Fatty Acids + How Much do We Actually Need? Study Says: Requirements May Have Been Significantly Overestimated Due to Methodological Flaws

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I have to admit: Given the high linoleic (N6) acid content of most of the commonly used plant oils in the Western diet, deficiencies are probably rare occur (if at all) mostly in clinical settings. I am quite sure all of you will have read something about the essential fatty acid requirements of mammals before. Unfortunately, I am also quite sure that you will have found recommendations ranging from the "peatarian" zero (as in "beware of essential fats, the are toxic") to the "Robb Wolff fish oil calculator bullocks" of the early days which recommended copious amounts of omega-3s and allowed for at best zero omega-6s in your diet. One of the reasons that the opinions on human essential fatty acid requirement diverge in the aforementioned ways is that scientific evidence to form an educated unbiased opinion on how much of these precious fats we actually need is scarce. More important than basal fatty acid requirement are the correct frying oils ...
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No Magic Numbers: The Omega-3:Omega-6 (N3/N6) Ratio - Higher is Better, But as Part of the Standard American Diet Even a 1:1 Ratio Won't Protect You Against Diabesity

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Eating "like an American" makes you fat and sick. No matter what the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio of your diet may be. It is a pity. Yeah, if the latest study from the University of South Carolina was a human study, it would finally provide a definitive answer to the question how much omega-3 we actually need. Well, I should clarify: It would provide an answer to the question how much omega-3 we need with a given baseline omega-6 intake. In view of the fact that the study duration was 20 weeks, it would yet take more than 60 (human) years to find out, whether the ratio of n-3/n-6 in the diet is in fact as irrelevant as the reslts Reilly T. Enos et al. present in their latest paper would suggest. You can learn more about omega-3 & co at the SuppVersity Fish Oil Makes You Rancid? Are All Fats Bad For You? Fish Oil & GLA vs. Acne MUFA & Fish Oil Don't Match Fish Oil Doesn't Help Lose Weight Rancid Fish Bad 4 Health Over those 20 w...
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Foods, Not Macros: Isoenergetic Breakfast With Identical Macronutrient Content More Satieting With Eggs vs. Flakes. Plus: Omega-3 <> Microbiome <> Obesity Interactions

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Eggs or Flakes? Not 30% vs. 25% protein! A brief reminder of the fact that the stuff you eat is still food. I am not quite sure when or why this happened, but I know that more and more people are thinking in terms of "macros" instead of foods. What I do know, though, is that the recent publication of studies from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at the Louisiana State University System (Bayham. 2014) and an ostensibly unrelated study that was conducted by researchers from the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, Biosciences Institute in Cork and scientists working at the local university and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Patterson. 2014) confirms - once again (!) - how futile this ignorant approach to nutrition actually is. Eggs vs. cereals - not the best example, but... In that, I am well aware that the "battle" between an egg- and a cereal-based breakfast in the Patterson study is not exactly a good model of what's currently ...
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Fish Oil or GLA to Treat Acne Vulgaris? Controlled Human Trial Confirms: 2g EPA + DHA or 400mg GLA do the Trick!

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If you want to know how to get of pubertal acne, you got to ask professional pubescents ;-) The study at hand is not only the first experimental verification of the efficacy of omega-3 + gamma linoleic acid supplementation in acne treatment, it's also "paleo approved", because it cites a study by no one else but Loraine Cordaine himself ;-) Don't worry, I am just kiddin' around. In spite of the fact that Cordain's study "Acne vulgaris: a disease of Western civilization" (Cordain. 2002) is in fact the #1 on the reference list, the scientists from the Seoul National University College of Medicine refrain from (paleolithic) dairy bashing in their evaluation of "the clinical efficacy and safety of omega-3 fatty acids and of GLA for the treatment of mild to moderate facial acne." (Jung. 2014) If you google "natural acne treatment" it will usually not take long until you find a reference to fish oil and gamma linoleic acid (a...
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The Quest For the Best N6:N3 Ratio. Swine Study Suggests: 5:1 is Healthy, 1:1 Will Also Cut Fat and Build Muscle

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 Yes, this study is about omega-3s, but it is not about the beneficial effects of fish oil. Ok, I see you are totally excited, so I am not going to beat around the bush for long: According to a soon-to-be-published study from the Hunan Provincial Engineering Research Center of Healthy Livestock, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture at the Chinese Academy of Sciences  a 5:1 ratio of n-6:n3 (as in omega-6 to omega-3) is good enough to keep pigs healthy. Kicking out another couple of grams of omega-6 fatty acids, on the other hand, had pretty intriguing effects on the body composition of the ninety-six male cross-bred (Large White£ Landrace) pigs who happened to weigh about as much as an average human being (another advangate, of swine - HED calculations are not necessary; learn more ). Did you know that pigs are opportunistic omnivores just like us and provide a better model of human metabolism than our little, furry remote cousins with the big round eyes and the lo...
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You Eat What You Feed: How Much Omega-3s Can You Possibly Pack into a Single Steak? The Impressive Effects of a "Grass(+)" Diet on Raw Meat & Meat Products

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Learn more about the fatty acid and nutrient composition of grass-fed vs. regular beef this SuppVersity article is for you... and make the first step to reduce your CVD risk by 20% irrespective of whether or not you're going to eat grass-fed in the future! I remember that I wrote a previous post about the detrimental effects of growing salmon on a high omega-6 diet. The result is a fish with an omega-3 to omega-6 ratio that is totally different from that of the wild-caught salmon everyone is raving about. Bad news, I know and to be honest, I am fed up with bad news. Luckily you can rely on the scientists over at the Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology in Germany: Dirk Dannenberger and his colleagues have just published a paper that sheds some light on the beneficial side of this ostensibly nasty link between the fatty acid make-up of the feed and the fatty acid composition of the meat of the animals we eat. N6 in N3 out, N3 in N6 out - you see, it works both ways! ...
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